Events | 2009.03.15
Ariane Sherine: You can't beat a good playground taunt
A well-crafted insult can echo down through the ages - but you can\'t beat a good playground taunt
It was a dispute worthy of any creche, even if the protagonists modestly deny it ever happened. After Cristiano Ronaldo, the pulchritudinous Manchester United footballer, was inexpertly tackled by Newcastle\'s Steven Taylor on Wednesday night, various tabloid legend has it that he snarled at the defender: "Your style of football is shit!" Not to be outdone in the uncrafted-invective stakes, Taylor hit back with a possibly inadvertent stroke of Dadaist genius: "At least I\'m not ugly!"
In this version of events Ronaldo, who had probably never invited a similar jibe, was understandably stumped. "You\'ve always been a rubbish footballer," he insisted lamely - prompting his opponent again to add insult to injury, literally: "I know, but you are still ugly!" It\'s unclear whether Taylor was paraphrasing Churchill\'s famous putdown, or merely required a visit to Specsavers.
Granted, this altercation - sadly now known to be apocryphal, or possibly involving one of Ronaldo\'s genuinely unattractive team-mates - is unlikely to make the kind of history reserved for such stylish sparring partners as Churchill and George Bernard Shaw. When Shaw reportedly wrote, "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend ... if you have one," Churchill replied: "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second ... if there is one" - so creating the kind of rare badinage that is recounted gleefully by generations.
William Hague invoked one of these great wits when he ribbed Harriet Harman at Prime Minister\'s Questions, just hours before Ronaldo and Taylor squared up: "Why doesn\'t she now step in?" he asked. "When Chamberlain lost his party\'s confidence, Churchill stepped forward. When Eden crossed the Atlantic exhausted, well, Supermac came forward. This could be her moment."
However, such repartee is often less about slighting one\'s opponent, and more about parading one\'s intellect before an audience. While quotable lines and elaborate quips are preferred in public life, there\'s little place for Wildean wit on the football field. The aim here is to vent your frustration and provoke your adversary, like some kind of verbal matador. If he loses his head, his game may just go with it - as Zinedine Zidane amply demonstrated in the 2006 World Cup final.
Playground insults, then, are most effective: any taunts involving immediate family or partners, specifically the suggestion that you may have been intimate with them recently, should suffice; as should barbs based around physical, sexual or sporting prowess. The less convoluted and mature, the better: if in doubt, the phrase most likely to generate outrage is the universal "Your mum", which translates seamlessly across language barriers.
Cricket, though, is renowned for "sledging"; legendary tales abound of verbal skewering between players. When the Australian paceman Glenn McGrath lazily asked Zimbabwe\'s Eddo Brandes, "Why are you so fat?", Brandes swiftly riposted: "Because every time I shag your wife, she gives me a biscuit." Likewise, the former Australian wicketkeeper Rod Marsh once reportedly greeted Ian Botham on the pitch with the opener: "So how are your wife and my kids?"
Politicians aren\'t allowed to be so base. Peter Mandelson\'s dismissal of yesterday\'s green custard debacle as "adolescent" was telling: it\'s essential that MPs be seen as more responsible than most. It\'s possible that they envy the freedom of sports people to dispense with veiled enmity. Western leaders must be tempted, when faced by another menacing Bin Laden video, to reply with the childhood standard: "I know you are, but what am I?"
Perhaps the grass is always greener, even if there\'s no custard on it.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]nts-football-cristiano-ronaldo
